What do you do with your old journals? We had a lively discussion on this topic at our writer’s group meeting in December. Should we keep them? Hide them? Save them for all posterity or burn them? There were as many opinions and options as there were people in the group:

• “My old journals are hidden in a secret place that only my best friend knows. She’s promised that if anything happens to me like I die or I’m in a coma, she will get them and burn them. Not even my husband knows where my journals are.”
• “I keep all my journals and I hope my niece reads them after I’m gone so she’ll know more about who I really was.”
• “My sister helped me burn my old journals. We had a ceremony. Watching them burn felt like letting go of pain and trouble and making way for my new happier life.”

Last summer, I read through 15 of my old journals going back almost as many years. Some entries were downright painful –  my feelings of despair and frustration dealing with an abusive boss in a miserable workplace, fears about my impending knee surgery, and worries about my career, money, world peace, etc. I saw no value in saving these entries.

But there were also plenty of entries I deemed valuable – ideas for future articles, blog posts, stories, and art/crafts projects. Notes about car and house repairs, and significant events through the years such as births, deaths, marriages, and health issues. And happy entries like my joyful retirement from that God-awful workplace, my expressions of relief that knee surgery wasn’t so bad after all, and my feelings of satisfaction working for myself.

I cherry-picked entries and typed them into Evernote. Then I threw my journals in the recycle bin. I felt good letting go of the “bad” stuff, saving the good, and seeing empty (temporary) space in my bookcase.

What do you do with your old journals?